


Question mark

by crayons



Series: Question mark [1]
Category: fromis_9 (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 03:03:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14946395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crayons/pseuds/crayons
Summary: Some attempts at conversation lead to a resolution. Some questions are left unanswered. Some questions answered by more questions.





	Question mark

Gyuri just knows. Things, people, all the essential details. They’ve figured out that much. She’s smart, observant, quiet, and subtle. Although that subtlety is sometimes muddled with clumsiness and sincerity. So much, it isn’t actually subtle at all. She remembers well. She’s caring and considerate, always thinking of others first. She speaks and listens well, and gets along with everyone. So in a way, if Jisun thinks of her like this, she’s almost kind of perfect really.

Except Gyuri is quick to tears. Although, there’s nothing wrong with crying. But Jisun hears her sometimes in the dead silence of their room, trying to quiet her sobs, and she could only blame Gyuri for being the quiet type, the considerate type, the independent type. So in a way, if Jisun thinks of her like this, she’s only almost kind of perfect actually.

Gyuri just knows. They’ve figured out that much, still sometimes it comes as such a surprise when she does a thing she’s unlikely to do. Like when Jiheon’s shoelaces came undone in the middle of practice, and she quickly kneels and ties it neatly for her. Like when Nagyung was sulking, and she was the first one to notice, pulling her in and holding her hand. Like when Seoyeon was hungry and she goes out of her way to buy her a chocolate bar. Jisun wonders if one year is too short of a time. The one year between her and Gyuri, if it were three or four or five, would Gyuri do things like that for her too?

Gyuri just knows, except she doesn’t. She shouldn’t anyway, not when Jisun has been so good at hiding it. She doesn’t remember since when, just that Jisun likes her. Maybe it was towards the end of the show, or the start of their dorm life. Certainly, it wasn’t since the beginning. It’s so easy to miss her, if you don’t pay attention. Gyuri can seem like such an ordinary person, and she says it often too. She used to just be a regular kid living a mundane life. She was like everyone. Except she isn’t.

How can she not know how special she is? How good, and beautiful, and unique.

Nagyung goes down from her room, and sees Jisun and Gyuri sat across each other in the living room. “Oh, it’s mom and dad.”

Jisun has heard this countless times, and still she doesn’t know how to feel about it. She steals a glance at Gyuri and it’s understandable why Nagyung says that. Gyuri is in a dark blue striped pajama, and Jisun is wearing a pink silk sleep wear. Like a father and mother would. They’re not saying it because they’ve figured it out. Not when she’s been so good at hiding it.

“Why are you still up? Are you still hungry?” Gyuri asks.

“No, I’m just going to get a drink, unni.”

“Unni,” Jiheon echoes from the upstairs room, and shortly after she’s trailing behind Nagyung in the kitchen. Jiheon dotes on Nagyung like she’s younger than her. Sometimes the same way Jisun would like Gyuri to dote on her.

“Well, I’m going to head to bed.” Gyuri announces, glancing at Jisun. “What about you?”

It’s not a question, but more of a suggestion. Let’s head to bed is what she means. They’ve gotten used to the habit of turning the lights off only when both of them are in bed. Jisun turns the television off, the act itself a confirmation that she’ll follow Gyuri soon after.

“Kids, go to sleep early.” Jisun tells them off, peeking at the kitchen before going inside their room and closing the door behind her quietly.

Jisun has learned of being good at being alone early in life. She was the only kid in a household full of adults, and naturally as life would have it, adults are thrust into the world without as much of a choice, and the kid that she was stayed at home, and learned to take care of herself well. One can learn a lot of life skills, when left to fend for themselves. This is why Jisun knows how to cook, and why she likes organizing. Still there are certain things one cannot learn by being alone.

They held a meeting in their dorm when they were newly formed, and barely taking shape, trying to make sense of the name they were given – it sinks in not immediately after the end of the show, but when they’ve started unpacking their bags, filling in the unfamiliar rooms with their things: they’re going to be living together, they’re going to have to be together for a while, they’re going to be a group now.

They each took turns to say something about themselves. Their little habits and what puts them off. Small but relevant details that other groups learn through experience and years of being together. They had one summer together so they have to make-do like this, since they aren’t as gifted with the luxury of time. Will that be enough? The show trained them in a lot of aspects, but not in this. They were competitors first before anything. She stepped into that pink classroom knowing it had the forty-one others that wanted the same thing as her. The number of people getting smaller and smaller. From that, to a nine that held her in the center.

“Jisun, are you okay?”

She’s been spacing out, pausing in the middle of their room.

Gyuri is more adept when it comes to people. Gyuri who has lived in several places, and moved schools several times, all accepting of the change that comes with the nature of her father’s work. Gyuri who likes travelling, and has even gone to a foreign country by herself. Gyuri who is quick and good at making friends. Gyuri who seems to be the unifying force that weaves them all into harmony. The quiet force that none of them can imagine the group without.

A quiet force that pushed towards Jisun’s heart, slowly unraveling her, crumbling her calm and composed resolve, with Jisun finally saying, “Is it okay if I like you?”

Not even half a beat later, Nagyung and Jiheon knock on their door, opening it a little to peek their heads. “Good night, mom and dad!” They say cheerfully, unaware of what they have intruded to.

“Good night, children.” Gyuri replies calmly, in hopes that the two won’t notice the strange atmosphere in the room.

When they are sure the two of them have retreated back to their room, Gyuri smiles at her. A small unsure smile. “You like me?” She asks, doubt coating her every word, like it’s the most impossible thing to happen.

“Don’t you know?”

“Can I hug you?” She asks, but she’s already coming closer.

Jisun nods, and it disappears into Gyuri’s embrace. Why does she even ask for permission, if they fit so well together like this? Jisun clings onto her. If Jisun were more like Seoyeon, she would climb Gyuri like a tree, but since she isn’t like her at all, so they’re swaying instead, dancing to the silence ringing after a confession. Jisun isn’t especially keen at physical contact, sometimes retracting at any slight touch. Gyuri isn’t particularly touchy either but she hugs and reaches for a hand to hold too at times, and Jisun only accepts it when she’s feeling cold. She’s not cold now, a bit warm to touch actually and yet she doesn’t let go.

Why her of all people? When Jiwon can make Jisun laugh more? When Jiwon seems to make her happier?

“Is this okay?”

Under what circumstances would this be not okay? Under whose judgment would this be not okay? Gyuri’s mind begins to provide all the answers, and it’s frightening to have it all play out in her head. In a way, this makes her hate being rational and level-headed because she should give an immediate answer as reassurance, but every passing second births uneasiness, because she knows, although a little too bitterly, that in a lot of ways this might not be okay.

And in some ways, Jisun seems to know it too.

“Why are you crying?” Gyuri strokes her hair. Jisun rarely cries. Gyuri has never meant to make her cry. “What can I do to make you feel better?”

She feels Jisun loosen her hold while her intertwined hands still hung around her waist, and at that, Gyuri takes a look at her face. “What can I do to make you feel better?” She repeats, holding her gaze this time.

Jisun’s eyes flicks towards her lips. “Do you mind?”

And Jisun realizes that Gyuri doesn’t know a lot of things actually.

She’s seen her up close, but why does her heart beat so rapidly in her chest, so much that she can even feel it in her fingertips? She sees her all the time, when she’s just woken up, when she’s sad, during all the times she finds herself unpretty, when she’s only unmade. They all feel like that sometimes. Like they’ve recently come out of their shell, and they don’t know what to do with themselves.

Gyuri doesn’t know a lot of things actually. Gyuri doesn’t know how to put makeup on. Gyuri doesn’t know how to dress well. She doesn’t know how to give up at all.

“Can I sleep next to you?” Jisun resigns to asking for easier more straightforward requests.

But they can’t sleep so they’re lying in bed, facing each other, trying their hardest not to make contact. It was easier when Gyuri didn’t know, when Jisun hadn’t yet professed her feelings in such a desperate way. It was easier to hide, and run away.

“I wish I hadn’t been the one to make you cry.” Gyuri says, after much thought.

“You didn’t. I made myself cry.”

“I wish I hadn’t been the person to make you lonely.”

Jisun no longer able to control herself scoots closer to Gyuri. “It comes with the fact that I like you the most, so it’s fine.”

*

Before heading to school, Chaeyoung had planned to say goodbye to Gyuri after overhearing the manager say that she’s leaving today, but ultimately decides against it when she sees another figure in her bed. Chaeyoung just knows, so she keeps quiet. She closes the door behind her quietly, suddenly coming face-to-face with a very sleepy Seoyeon.

“Did you wake them up?” she asks. Gyuri usually wakes up first, since she’s more sensitive to the sound of the ringing of the alarm. But since Gyuri has been tired from practicing lately, Seoyeon recently has become in charge of waking people up.

“Give them more time.”

“Okay then,” Seoyeon doesn’t question it, heading towards the big room, before Chaeyoung stops her midway to give her a hug.

“What’s with you?”

“I’ll miss you.”

They’re given a break to spend with their families. Just a few days, before they start preparing again. It’s not a big deal at all really. But when Chaeyoung returns to their dorm from school later, no one will be there to welcome her back and ask her about her day. And especially because those were the words she really wanted to say, even if not necessarily to Seoyeon.

Seoyeon still in a bit of a daze, doesn’t process it until much later when Gyuri has woken up, revealing herself in the kitchen fully dressed, with a coat hanging on her arm to boot. Her presence turns the idle chatter in the bustling kitchen into silence. It’s understandable that they’re noisy. One, there’s Jiwon. Two, there’s a lot of them. Nine is a big number, even though they’re not going to be nine for a while. Plus, the kitchen is Jisun’s space after all, without her, everyone else seems to struggle in something even as simple as boiling water and even Hayoung who seems capable enough doesn’t quite match this place as much as Jisun does.

“Should I wake Jisun up?”

The soup simmers over, creating a mess and shrieks of helplessness as several hands reach to turn the stove off.

Gyuri chuckles playfully. “I wonder if that did it.”

Seoyeon is reminded in that exact moment why it is so easy to tease Gyuri. Because she is playful in return, but mostly because she never gets mad—she gets slightly upset, sure—but she doesn’t ever really get mad at them. She accepts their every criticism of even the smallest of things like her socks or the way she would draw in her eyebrows. But in some ways, she’s hard-headed too, unable to change her ways.

Seoyeon wonders if they say ‘I love you’ as much as they tease, provoke and laugh.

“It’s today?” Saerom asks the question for all of them. 

Life is a battle. It’s already hard enough as it is. Gyuri takes a deep breath as if to gather courage. “It’s today.”

Seoyeon wonders if they say ‘I love you’ enough, and when she sees Jisun bawling at the sight of Gyuri’s luggage in the living room, she knows they don’t but they sure do know how to show it in their own ways. Jisun doesn’t cry often. Maybe this does guarantee that much tears. But Gyuri who cries often doesn’t even shed a tear, only smiling as she gives each of them a hug.

Seoyeon pulls Gyuri again when she moves away. “Chaeyoung said she’ll miss you.”

“Same here,” 

Gyuri lingers a bit longer with Jisun, stroking her hair, whispering something in her ear.

Saerom hands her a letter, from all of them. They wrote it beforehand, knowing that she’ll be leaving soon. Gyuri who likes letters more than any other gift, Gyuri who can only express herself well on paper, and behind people’s backs, taking care of things secretly, she leaves each of them a letter too, hidden in the attic, which they find only days later.

It is so easy to miss her, even if she hasn’t even really left – even if she’s not really leaving. But now, suddenly there’s a gap they can’t fill. Suddenly they’re incomplete.

*

They practice day and night to adjust their formations, but everyone only notices the missing piece. They’ve become whole through the process of losing. They were complete all along. 

They learn to smile despite knowing. They learn to answer the correct way. Eventually, they learn to evade the questions. They try to fill in the space that she’s left. They wait until they can become whole again.


End file.
